Gaming article

[owlmoose]

Are Video Games Evil?

Nice overview of this issue from The Wilson Quarterly. Thoughtful and well-argued; comes down pretty firmly on the pro-gaming side. There's a lot here but this tidbit particularly jumped out:

In The Ultimate History of Video Games (2001), game journalist Steven Kent cites pinball as a mechanical ancestor of today’s digital games. Pinball created a panic in some quarters—no pun intended—as a new and dangerous influence on society. Foreshadowing the antics of today’s antigaming politicians was New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who smashed pinball machines with a sledgehammer and banned them from his city in the 1930s, a prohibition that was not lifted until the 1970s. (To be fair to La Guardia, governments have long perceived societal threats from new games. In the 1400s Scotland banned golf, now its proud national pastime, because too many young men were neglecting archery to practice their swings.)

Comments

[delladella.livejournal.com]

Makes me wonder if you’ve heard of this new kill-the-heathens videogame based on the Left Behind series of books. If you want to check out some truly awesome hypocrisy in action, here’s a start (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/12/6/4137/52113/religious_war/Focus_On_The_Family_Endorses_Satanic_Role_Playing_Religious_Warfare_Video_Game_As_Kid_Safe).

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

I have heard of this. Some of the students were talking about it the other day, and the bit they focused on was that you could play either "good" or "evil". They came to the conclusion that everyone would play evil, because what's the fun in being good?

I hadn't realized it was created by the Left Behind folks, though. They scare me. A lot.

[delladella.livejournal.com]

Thing is, if you play on the Antichrist’s side, you can’t win. Or at least so I hear.

Yeah. Looks to me like an extremely cynical attempt to do some outreach. But this is the group who rails on violence in videogames—just that, in this one, it’s all fine. Religious violence ftw and all, I guess.